Idle Hands

Surely I should have learned by now that having time on my hands is never a good thing, that idle hours are never well spent. My own idle hands clicked onto ‘Reader’ and typed ‘Humour’ into the search bar. It’s been a long time since I found a new blog to follow and my latest crop of followers clearly don’t want me as one of their own, or if they do, they obviously think that I am somebody else: somebody with even the slimmest chance of making an income out of this waffle. I scanned down the page of the ‘humorous’ blogs on offer and reminded myself that dealing with crushing disappointment is all part of the human condition – at least if you are me. Firstly, I did not find a single blog that could in any way, be described as humorous, unless my grip on the English language has become even more tenuous than I feared. As far as I could see, most of them were there because they had the word ‘Humour’ as a tag. If this is the way that tags work, then I am very tempted to tag my next post ‘Get £1,000,000 of free cash by clicking on this blog.’ I see myself with thousands of new, albeit disappointed, readers.

Secondly – and I must be honest, by far the more distressing aspect of my trawl, this blog hadn’t even made the cut! Now, I realise I am no Oscar Wilde – I miss that particular qualification on so many counts – but come on, surely I should be able to get myself onto a list that is otherwise filled with ‘What is the basic fundamental of joke construction?’ and not a single ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ This is a very small pond, belly laugh-wise, and I cannot even get myself hauled out in a very broad net. I fear my goose – along with all hope of golden eggs – is cooked. I have ‘Humour’ as a category for God’s sake! What on earth do I need to do? (OK, if you’re going to be picky, I concede that including a joke or two might help.)

I have spent my life attempting to wrangle some kind of joy out of words. Most of the time the words have put up a pretty good fight. I know from very long experience that on the rare occasion I am truly happy with something I have written, a sober read-through the following day will see it hurtle towards the bin. Writing alone is the process of making a hundred jokes that nobody else gets whilst completely missing the one that everybody laughs at. There is nothing more joyful than finding that ‘killer line’ and nothing more soul destroying than seeing it die a death. There is joy to be found in writing with another discordant soul, laughing at the other person’s jokes and realising that you can add to them. Joy is in reading through an idea you had and hearing laughter exactly where you thought it might be hiding. I have laughed so much during long-ago writing sessions with the wonderful Mr Underfelt that I have feared for my health and my sanity – something I have never done in the last thirty or so years of writing alone. (Laugh, that is. I fear for my sanity on a daily basis. If I ever manage to find it, I will give it a very stern talking to.)

Solitary writing is a form of self abuse – although without quite the same sense of guilt or fear of blindness. It is all about the release. It is all about the disappointment. It is all about the ‘I’m not doing that again.’ I never think about writing: I just write. Like everybody else with an enthusiasm that dwarfs talent, I know that I will get it right one day. Like everybody else who waits for the day that they will get it right, I wait, and write.

I know that many of you are far more professional in your approach than I. On the one occasion that I wrote a novel, I meandered through the first half of the book, found the ending, went back to the beginning and then slowly drew the two together. I never had a plan, it just sort of worked itself out in a way that all of the top publishers of the day described as utter tripe. Only in sit-com did I ever have a beginning, a middle and an end in mind, because each episode is really just a single joke and the trick is just in holding the attention long enough to get there. Normally I had given up the ghost myself long before I reached the end. My dialogue just wouldn’t follow my plot. The phrase ‘It’s almost there, but…’ is the one I will have chiselled on my tombstone.

For the last three decades I have passed my time banging out this kind of fol-de-rol. Generally I start with the first line – I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain… I have a bookful of them. I write them down constantly. A million first sentences with absolutely no idea of where they are going. Often I sit down and leaf through the book until something catches my eye. Always I will have something on my mind, although I seldom know what it is, and it somehow attaches itself onto what I have written and, hand in hand, the two of them wander off towards the horizon where, if I am lucky, I catch them before they fall over the edge. Comedy is the gift of a flat earth. I can agonise all day over a single sentence, or I can find myself with a thousand words on paper and no real idea of how they got there. Either way, it makes little difference unless I can find a way to search for them that does not include the word ‘humour’. (Before you suggest it, I have tried prefixing with ‘Vain attempts at’, but I’m still not there. In fact I have just typed my name into the search bar and I still do not appear to exist. How closely this blogosphere mirrors life.)

The Devil makes work for idle hands, so the saying goes. I’ve always thought that the Devil probably had the best jokes. I wonder where he keeps them…

The Constructive Utilization of Time Gained

Having granted myself some extra ‘spare time’* by posting less often on my blog, I am now faced with the quandary of how to profitably deal with all of those vacant hours. In the certain knowledge that I will return to the fruitless pounding of computer keyboard in the very near future, I am loathe to stumble down the primrose path to pastimes anew – I have thought about fishing, but the only thing that really appeals is the sitting on the riverbank doing nothing for hours on end. I would be most put out if anything decided to take my bait, particularly if it meant that I had to remove something slimy and sentient from a hook. I fantasise about picking up the paint brush, but each time I do, my wife say, ‘Brilliant, you can start with the kitchen.’ In my mind I am sure that my current mental inertia is even more time-limited than my ability to carry the grandkids around on my shoulders all day, so what I need is something to fill the empty hours that is not too onerous, not too taxing, not too expensive and doesn’t involve me in any kind of physical activity that just might mean that my enhanced access to free time actually merely adds up to an end to it. I am, in short, watching an awful lot of daytime TV.

Daytime TV, it appears to me, exists for only one reason: to prepare you for death. Nothing intensifies the experience of passing years and increased decrepitude like a couple of hours spent in front of some half-remembered detective yarn from the 1960’s, a 1970’s sitcom in which the ‘isms are so often displayed that it makes your brain hurt, or a coven of middle aged misandrists who believe that all manner of noisome wrongs can be righted by simply shouting louder. Nothing, that is, except the adverts that punctuate the effluvial flow at five-minute intervals, at a volume that all but ensures injury in the dash for the remote control.

If you have never craved a stairlift, you will almost certainly do so after you are shown how simple they are to fit to almost any staircase and how transformative they can be. How easy it is to glide sedately heavenward at a speed that will almost certainly ensure you have forgotten why you were going by the time you get there. Such is the allure of the slow-motion ascent that I envision millions of ageing bungalow-dwellers trading in their single-level abodes for an upper-story simply so that they can avail themselves of Messrs Stanna’s finest and cruise upwards with cup of tea, linen, or a bouquet of cut flowers at a pace befitting their age and the elasticity of time.

That is if they have not already released the equity in their home, of course. The knowledge that the equity release company’s representatives – whose sole task it is to sell you their product – will ‘even tell you if it is not right for you’, is comforting indeed. Everyone loves the warm embrace of a commissioned salesperson.

Of course, you might not be tempted to sell your home for half of its value if you have previously fitted a stair lift with, at the top of its stately rise, a doody little bath with a door in it. Strip off, step in, sit down and wait to be enveloped by the gently rising waters – as long as you don’t succumb to hypothermia in the meantime. In a world of fuel-poverty, there can be few better ideas than encouraging those of advancing years to sit naked in the bathroom, waiting for the water to rise to waist-level and, having bathed, wet and naked whilst it drains. Clean in both life and death, it is win/win, as long, of course, as the deceased has taken out a Funeral Insurance Plan.

And who could resist the lure of happy, smiling septuagenarian friends discussing how much better their lives have become since ensuring their relatives will have no expensive funeral bills to face? Filling in the form is clearly great fun – I suppose that compared to the alternative of Classic Emmerdale, it might well be – as they laugh a lot, especially when one of them admits to having a over-abundance of parsnips this year. The insurance company will even send you one of those new-fangled ballpoint pens just for enquiring. You can bin the quill. Send them your bank details and you will have a friend for life.

That is not, though, to say that the daytime advertisers expect all of their viewers to be housebound. Despite our reputation for impulse-buying everything we could ever need from QVC, they realise that we, the ancient ones, may still have to venture out from time to time: perhaps to have the Velcro renewed on our shoes or to loudly discuss with the doctor’s receptionist which slot we should put the sample in. Indeed, they are very keen that we should get out and about. So keen, in fact, that they have created a myriad ways in which we can do so: three-wheeled, four-wheeled, five-wheeled, collapsible and de-luxe versions that remotely load themselves into the boot of your car providing it is the size of a bus and has a similar amount of free space for the ramp (not included) behind it. As a species, it would seem, we are not designed to walk past retirement. We are designed to weave manically through a peripatetic maze of pedestrian and on-coming vehicle whilst grappling with the calculation of multi-driveway power loss viz the possibility of getting back home without having to be dragged there by the AA or the surly offspring of the next door neighbour who has nothing better to do since he lost his balaclava. The information that a battery is available that will get you to the shop and back, but is of such a size that you will need a second vehicle to carry it, is always in the smallprint, which, of course, you will not be able to read unless you have just ordered your new on-line varifocals with guaranteed comfort fit and a fully recyclable cleaning cloth at no extra charge.

Myself, I now get all my exercise via the little vibrating footpad advertised and, I am certain, regularly utilised by Sir Ian Botham. It does make the TV picture a little blurry, but when you’re watching episodes of Dr Finlay’s Casebook that are older than you are, it barely matters and, if you keep on watching, they are almost certain to come up with a product to rectify it sooner or later…

*There is, of course, no real way to increase the time available to you – other than a deal with the Devil – if it was possible to buy extra time by doing nothing, I would probably live forever.

The Running Man on Sundays

Being ‘a runner’ at last has come as something of a surprise to me: I have always been a runner last of all things. Covid has changed me and although I do not now, and doubt I ever will, enjoy running, without question I do feel better for doing it and I will continue to do so for as long as I am able. What I will not do, if I can possibly avoid it, is to run on a Sunday, because the paths are thronged with weekend dog-walkers and I spend so much time leaping up and down kerbs in an attempt to give them what they consider to be sufficient space that I might as well stay at home and go up and down the doorstep. This week, however, for reasons that might provide someone with a decent PHD thesis, I was forced to brave the canine overlords and head out on the Sabbath. I prepared myself and planned a route that, for the most part, allowed me to stick to the gutter, where most people seem to think that I belong. What I had not considered is that nobody appears to park their cars on the road any longer. All cars are parked across the path as close to the hedge/fence/discarded mattresses as it is possible to get without scraping the paint from the wing-mirror. There is absolutely no way to pass without taking to the centre of the road where you encounter the second Sunday morning issue: all home deliveries, it would seem, are now made on this day. The whole village is a web of DPD vans, Yodel vans and vans that are obviously recently purchased once-upon-a-time Post Office vans with which ends are being forced to meet. I am able to run a straighter line after sixteen pints of cider than I am in the streets of this village on a Sunday morning. Car doors spring open in front of me, drivers leap out on top of me, everybody wants to know why I am not on the path. I am not on the path because it is full of bloody car! I am not in the gutter because it too is full of bloody car! I am in the road because it is not full of bloody car, it is full of Amazon.

Sunday morning is a very social time and, for reasons unknown to non-dog walkers, almost all Sunday morning dog walkers dress as if they are about to run a marathon and they cannot resist the opportunity to gather on street corners to discuss it. The array of skin-tight, body-shaming, hi-viz elastane on show provides a pallet otherwise seen outside of Salvador Dali on a particularly vivid acid trip. Not a single molecule of it has ever encountered human sweat*. Everywhere you look there are small groups of middle-aged, semi-fluorescant lycra-clad dog exercisers chatting the morning away before, presumably, wheezing their way back home to a full roast dinner, a bottle of red and a couple of hours in front of Harry Potter on Netflix. These tiny gatherings do not move for any reason what-so-ever. They merely stare disdainfully as you try to navigate a path between them and the adjacent delivery van without falling under the wheels of the four-by-four on its way to pick up the morning papers. I cannot begin to imagine how upset they would be if I were to be disembowelled by the three-ton school transporter and, in the process, managed to splash brain all over their leisurewear. I cannot imagine anything would get that out, and blood red clashes so horribly with lime green…

Anyway, having misguidedly sallied forth, I persevered – I had no other way of getting home – but, the morning being warm and my anxiety being heightened, I pretty soon found sweat trickling down every available surface (as well as one or two that really should not have been) and particularly down my brow and into my eyes. I wear contact lenses to run: I cannot rub my eyes for fear of losing one down a drain, I cannot rub my forehead for fear of stretching the sagging mess of skin that ripples across my brow and popping an earbud out, so I blink a lot and rarely recognise anyone around me. Strangely, that situation seems to work for everyone, particularly those who studiously avoid looking me in the eye; who choose to deny my entire presence by staring at the ground, scanning the clouds or talking to the lamp-post. They appear to believe that whatever I have got (and I must have something) it must be infectious and could possibly be contracted by eye contact. To me, they are an amorphous blob; to them, I am a peripatetic pariah but, to everyone’s relief, our eyes never meet and thus I do not get the opportunity to leach out their very souls from their hooded optic orbs. Which is just as well, being Sunday and all…

*Other, of course, than the children forced to produce it.

The Writer’s Circle #32 – Sex, Greed and Revenge

“Sex,” said Frankie, to the consternation of some of those around the circle, many of whom had not yet had time to let their dinner’s settle. “Sex, greed and revenge are the only true motives for murder.”
“And love,” suggested Deidre. “Surely love is the strongest motive of all.”
“Love, sex, what’s the difference?” said Billy.
“Surely love is a deeper, more passionate emotion,” said Deidre who, by her own admission, wouldn’t know. “Who would consider killing for sex?”
“There are plenty of men right throughout history who’ve killed for sex,” said Vanessa. “Surely sex is the biggest motive of all.”
“I don’t think that’s quite the case,” said Tom. “Sex is just the weapon. Power is the motive. Men don’t kill for sex, they kill for the power over women…”
“Or other men,” said Jeff.
“…Or other men,” said Tom with a nod of acknowledgement. “Whatever, power is the real motive.”
“And jealousy,” suggested Elizabeth. “Surely jealousy has to be in there somewhere. Unrequited love.”
“Jealousy always sounds rather more like uninvited love to me,” said Vanessa. “More like unrequited lust than love.”
“Well, a little lust can go a long way,” said Louise.
“And there’s infatuation,” added Penny. “Unrequited love becomes infatuation, and infatuation is certainly a motive for murder.”
“She’s right,” said Elizabeth. “I remember being infatuated with a boy at school. Followed him around like a little dog I did. Held his books while he played football, gave him half my meat balls at school lunches. I’d have done anything for him.”
“And what about lust?” asked Louise.
“Hardly. I was seven and he was eight so I’m taking about anything within reason. Anyway, he broke my heart when he paid a penny to see Wendy Patterson’s knickers. I could have killed him!”
“There!” said Frankie. “Right there; sex as a motive for murder.”
“Not really. I was most annoyed because it was my penny. I’d been saving it for a Bazouka Joe and he blew it on Patterson’s scabby knickers. He could have seen mine for free if he’d wanted – or anybody’s really – we all did PE in the bloody things. Navy blue serge. They were like the Mary Whitehouse of sex appeal. We changed them once a week, less if the weather was wet and they didn’t smell too bad of wee…”
“Why if the weather was wet?”
“They weighed half a ton when they were washed, they took forever to dry, even on a sunny day.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Phil, “we just need to open out our definition of sex to encompass lust, love, infatuation, jealousy… all the affairs of the heart.”
“Is lust really an affair of the heart?” asked Elizabeth. “I think, perhaps, you are setting your sights a little too high.”
“Always been my problem,” grinned Phil. “Too high and generally just wide of the mark.”
“Yes well, putting Philips slight paucity of aim to one side for now,” said Elizabeth with a barely concealed, theatrical wink, “surely lust is the last thing you would kill for.”
“Unless it was unfulfilled,” suggested Jane. “Or if it was for someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“Someone it wasn’t wise to lust over.”
“Ah, I get it,” said Phil. “A woman scorned.”
“Or man,” said Jeff.
“Or man…” said Phil.

“Sex it is,” said Frankie. “Lust, infatuation, jealousy, even love; they’re all sex at the end of the day.”
“Only the end of the day darling?” drawled Louise. “How terribly Puritan.”
Frankie grinned. “Point is,” he continued, “you can call it what you like, but it’s still the same thing.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “What a quiet life you must have led.”
“I mean,” he persisted, “it all boils down to the same thing, doesn’t it. Boys and girls…” He looked at Jeff. “…and boys.”
Jeff smiled broadly. “Love has no boundaries does it?” he said. “Nobody chooses who to love. Nobody chooses to have their heart broken, but people do choose how to respond to it. Some go under, some bounce back up and some… some fulfil Frankie’s criteria and look for somebody to pay the price, but the thing is, if you’re going to write it, can you put yourself in their shoes? Can you understand their rage?”
“Rage. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Rage is about sex, lust, infatuation, jealousy even, but not love; there’s no rage in love. That’s all hearts and flowers, birds and bees, and ‘I will if you will’, not at all the kind of thing to kill over.”
“Surely in war,” suggested Deidre, “all those young men sent out to kill, they died for love: love of their country.”
“Love of not getting shot as a traitor, most of them,” muttered Frankie. “How many of them would ever have shot another man, except in abject fear. Fear never leads to a neat murder, does it? Too messy, too easy to solve. Besides, that’s quite a different kind of love, isn’t it?”
“Different from the kind that leads to murder?”
“Different to the kind that leads to sex.”
“What about the love of one’s family; one’s children, one’s parents. Surely a man (and let’s face facts here, murder is almost exclusively a male failing) could be driven to kill for the love of those towards whom he has no sexual desire.”
“Well, as you put it like that, Deidre…” Frankie mimicked rising from his seat and approaching Deidre with his arms outstretched and his hands clawed.
“Frankie!” whispered Louise. “Be careful.” They were all pleased to have Deidre back in the fold and while she was clearly more than happy to join in the cut and thrust of the standard inconsequential argument, it was generally acknowledged that she was not yet quite ready to accept humorous affronts.
“Right,” said Elizabeth, with a certain finality in her voice, “so I think by now that we’ve probably established that love – in all of its manifold forms – is the very worst of human emotions. So what do we think about greed and revenge?…”

The Writer’s Circle # – Lingua In Maxillam

An open letter from the absent Deidre to the members of The Writer’s Circle.

Dear Everyone

Just a short note to apologise for my absence from this week’s meeting. I had truly intended to return to the fold this evening if it were not for the receipt of a far better offer. I am certain that you are all, by now, aware of the circumstances pertaining to my recent nonattendances – why I have not been there – as I swore Francis to secrecy and, after a week in his company, I know how untrustworthy he really is. (On a side note, I would say to any of you, that if you are ever in trouble Francis is the man to call – a true rock, a steady head and an unwavering guardian – although you might find it wise to fill the biscuit barrel first.) I am sure that you all have a certain vision of me: a lonely, ageing spinster – and I cannot deny that, the facts are there. I have learned a great deal about myself over the past few weeks; most importantly that I do not need to be lonely – I just need to be less picky about the friends I choose. I would be proud to call any of you ‘friend’ – although I would be grateful if you did not bandy that around in the kind of circles within which I tend to circulate. (If we’re honest, that’s not entirely likely, is it?) I must endeavour not to crave the friends that I deserve, but to accept the ones that I have. Class strictures are not what they once were and I believe that mixing with those from a lower stratum is now probably viewed as a virtue. (A special nod to Billy: I won’t tell if you don’t!) I look forward to broadening my horizons in this effect within the next few weeks, although I will draw the line at tripe and cockles, and I refuse to wear any clothing that has not been starched and ironed to within an inch of its life – and yes, Phillip, that does include my underwear.
I know that Francis has given you all my new telephone number and it was a joy to hear from you all – especially since I now know how easy it will be to change the number again in the future.
As you will all be aware, I am not a great one for hiding my light under a bushel – my thanks to Vanessa for enlightening me on the nature of my bushel and for furnishing me with the phone number for Weight Watchers – but my darkest hour has, in fact, been accompanied by a gratifying degree of bushel-illumination, in that this week sees the release of my latest novel – I will allow myself the use of that word, and not the one that Terry suggested as I am sure that they are never released in hardback – and I have made the shortlist for Richard and Judy’s Book of the Month. Consequently I am currently ensconced within a very swish London hotel awaiting the private car that will whisk me away to my interview at Television Centre and therefore unable to bother myself with you lot. I have, of course, already loaded my handbag with shower gels, shampoos and conditioners – all, allegedly, smelling of hyacinth – as well as sachets of cheap instant coffee and bags of what PG claims to be tea, as nobody in their right mind ever uses a hotel kettle. I have not packed the Rich Tea biscuits as not even Francis will eat those. Nor have I put the complimentary shower cap in my ‘swag-bag’ as it is currently covering the TV remote, so that I don’t have to touch it. I do not know whether I will be interviewed by Mr Madeley himself, but I have made it quite clear that I will not be examining him for lumps regardless of the circumstances. I mention this, of course, not only by way of an explanation for my absence from this evening’s meeting, but also to remind you all of how successful I actually am. Whilst I know that in the future, many of you will achieve similar success, I would like it noted that I was the first!
I would love to read you all a chapter or two of my new book at next week’s meeting, but I am sure that you will have all read it yourselves by then – especially since it is on Special Offer at W H Smiths. (Although not – yet – in the bargain bin.) I will return next week, when I will accept your praise and congratulations with my usual degree of grace and humility – as long as nobody overloads with empathy – and I will be happy to autograph anything that is not flesh. Hopefully, thereafter, following a week of understandable adulation and fawning, we can return to the normal routine of petty squabbling and back-biting, of which we have all grown so fond. Most importantly, we can once again agree that I am in charge.
I am, yours truly
Deidre
Lingua in maxillam – do what I did, look it up.

P.S. If I have learned just one thing from these past few weeks – and only time will tell just how much I have learned – it is that life in general, and I in particular (like the grammar in this sentence) is not to be taken too seriously…

***

N.B. Richard Madeley is a daytime TV ‘star’ in the UK who once famously chaired the first live ‘testicular cancer’ check on UK television – although I should point out that it was not in fact he himself who had his old danglers massaged by the rubber-gloved TV doctor. Books chosen to appear on Richard and Judy’s (his wife and co-presenter – it was also not her old danglers that were massaged by the rubber-gloved TV doctor) Book Club traditionally benefit from a huge surge in sales and almost automatically become ‘best sellers’.

The Writer’s Circle began with ‘Penny’s Poem’ here.
The Writer’s Circle episode 29 ‘The Missing Deidre’ is here.

The Running Man on ‘Jogging from Memory’

Way, way back in 1980 I bought a book entitled ‘Jogging from Memory’ by Dr Rob Buckman¹ who had the rare gift of reducing me to tears of laughter with his prose. ‘Jogging from Memory’ is a collection of articles he wrote for various publications and it contains the article, also titled ‘Jogging from Memory’, which I now realise is the 1,000 word distillation of everything I have spent the last three years trying to crowbar into my own paean to misplaced youth – only funnier. Much, much funnier…

Dr Buckman was twenty-nine years old when he wrote about agreeing to take part in a charity ‘jog’. Thirty minutes – how hard could that be for a fit young man, finely tuned on bagels and coffee and primed for action – as long as it wasn’t too early? Sadly the realisation confronted him with a nerve-shredding ‘clang’ as he was ‘lapped by a fell-walker and two marathon runners’ within eleven yards of the start: he was not as young nor as fit as he used to be (nor, he suspected, had ever been). I could quote a hundred different brilliant lines to you – although not without being sued – but I will not because, frankly, I am not up to that sort of comparison. I can only urge you to buy the book (I’ve checked, you can still find it) and for goodness sake, sit down before you read it.

I am sixty-two years old as I write this (I think, it’s so hard to remember) and the ‘ageing, crumbling frame’ to which the erstwhile, barely out of his teenage years, Dr Buckman refers has been clinging to my bones for a number of decades now. Delaying the decline, which was taking me from man to jellyfish, was the main reason I started to run – I love my time with the grandkids and I want it to last as long as possible: they will put up with me smelling faintly of wee and boring them to death with stories from the past only as long as I can still kick a ball and climb a tree. I have rarely enjoyed running² but I do enjoy the fact that my physical well-being is much better since I started. I still feel like an old man – god dammit, I still am an old man – but I am now an old man who can run (in a fashion) without retching before I reach the garden gate; who can keep up with the grandkids when those, much younger, around me falter; who can pull up his own socks without the need for a chiropractor; who can wear a T-shirt without looking like a hippo in a sports bra; who can breathe in deeply without attracting dogs… I have found that, though running makes me, for the most part, somewhat more miserable than my normal curmudgeonly demeanour would have you believe, overall it makes me happier by allowing me to do more of what I want to do and – who knows – might just buy me a little more time in which to do it. It also means that I don’t feel quite so bad about the fact that I drink too much, eat too much and, given the option, do far too little – I remain a human slug, but definitely fitter than the slug I used to be.

In fact, what Dr Buckman’s little piece has done is to remind me that, although at certain times in my life I have been very fit, I have never been very fit at everything and most tellingly, when I played football regularly, cycled and circuit-trained (much to the dismay of my fellow work-out’ees, one of whom memorably asked me if I was on some kind of mental welfare scheme³) I was always useless at running, but now it doesn’t matter because I’m better at running than almost everything else I do⁴. At my age, it’s the memory that’s the problem: ask me what I was doing in 1965 and I’ll have a pretty good idea. Ask me what I was doing twenty minutes ago and I’ll have to sit down whilst my head stops spinning. My problem is not with jogging from memory as much as remembering why – and, in fact if – I was jogging in the first place. Mind you, if you’d asked me in 1980…

^1. I previously mentioned this book, Dr Buckman and my very tenuous connection to him in a 2020 post entitled ‘Odds & Sods – One of My Socks is Missing’. (You can read it here if you feel so inclined.) Dr Buckman died, although possibly to his own surprise, not whilst jogging, in 2011(I include a link to his Wiki page here). In my post I also mentioned Des O’Connor who has also since sadly passed away. I would have included a link to his Wiki page, but since it does not mention ‘Dick-A-Dum-Dum’ I have not bothered.

^2. I do actually remember feeling almost deliriously happy running one bright, sunny and warm spring morning during lockdown (I forget which lockdown) but it didn’t last long and I put it down to dodgy ceps.

^3. I am slightly prone to the ‘hyper’ and my mouth can run-on several feet ahead of my brain.

^4. I do, of course, pretty much nothing else.

My Running thoughts diary started with ‘Couch to 5k’ here.
Last week’s entry ‘Listening to my Body’ is here.

The Writer’s Circle #29 – The Missing Deidre

It was unusual for Deidre to be late and it was unheard of for her to be this late. Gradually, as the evening wore on and the group attempted to conduct normal business without her, distraction set in and all talk within the Circle revolved around her absence.
“Maybe her bus was late,” said Penny.
“She drives in normally,” said Vanessa. “She’s picked me up occasionally.”
“Well maybe the car has broken down.”
“She’d have rung.”
“Could she have lost her phone?”
Despite all appearances, everyone involved in the group was quietly fond of Deidre and starting to worry. A number of attempts were made to call her, but her phone was turned off and, despite the determination of the group to carry on as normal, the meeting petered out after the mid-session break and Frankie agreed that, as he lived the closest, he would call round to her house on his way home and speak to her. After much confusion – during which Phil ‘took charge’ of installing the App onto most of their phones – a WhatsApp group was created so that Frankie could contact them all with ‘the news’ as soon as he had it. It was doubtful that some of them would know how to open it, but at least it was there. Deidre, for one, would not approve, but she probably never needed to know.

In the event, Frankie’s message popped up on the group at eleven o’clock that evening. It was short, only moderately assuring and, for the rest of the group, deeply intriguing: “She’s OK” it said. “Back next week.” But as it turned out, she was not, and it was Frankie who took control of the meeting.
“She’s been cuckolded,” he said.
“Cuckolded?” asked Terry. “What’s that?”
“I think,” said Jane, “that a cuckold is a man whose wife has been unfaithful.”
“OK, not exactly cuckolded,” said Frankie. “Although I’d argue that in the twenty-first century she could have been. She’s been scammed, I’m afraid; conned by an online ‘boyfriend’. She’s mortified. She can’t face you yet even though, as far as she’s concerned, you don’t know what has happened. It has really knocked the stuffing out of her – and, as most of you know, she was always choc-full of it.”
“Scammed how?” asked Billy.
“Part romance, part vanity. She’s just ashamed of herself.” Frankie dropped his head slightly. “None of us, and I most certainly include myself in this, gives much thought to Deidre outside of Circle nights. None of us ever contact her. She’s lonely… She was duped by a Romance Scammer who slowly managed to weedle enough information out of her to know how he could really hurt her. He told her he was involved in a TV production company and he persuaded her that, with just a little capital to ‘grease the wheels’ he would be able to convince them that her first novel would be ideal material for a full-scale series.”
“How much?” asked Vanessa, who like everybody else was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable.
“Twenty grand,” said Frankie.
“Oh God, she didn’t…”
Frankie shook his head. “She didn’t have it – at least not immediately to hand, which of course was what he wanted.”
An audible sigh of relief crossed the Circle.
“She did have five though… She sent it to him by money transfer and then, almost immediately realised what she’d done, but she didn’t feel that she had anybody she could tell, so she just turned off her phone, ate cake and sat in the dark feeling stupid.”
“Well, it sounds to me that she’s five thousand pounds wiser now,” said Elizabeth. “Is there any way that she can get it back?”
“I don’t think so,” said Frankie. “But at least she hasn’t given him any bank accounts or anything. I’ve spent the last few days helping her change all of her bank details, her phone number, her email, everything… The cyber Deidre Desmond of last week no longer exists.”
“So, when is she coming back to the group?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” said Frankie. “I’ve got her new number here, and I persuaded her to let me put WhatsApp on her new phone. If you look, you’ll see that she’s been part of the group for a few days now…”
They all looked. None of them had looked before.
“So, is she ok?”
“She’s still Deidre; your guess is as good as mine. Her new book is published next week so, if we can manage to get her back, I’m sure she’ll be just as insufferable as ever.”
“Insufferable is a little harsh,” said Penny. Frankie smiled at her and raised an eyebrow – a trick he had learned from Roger Moore in ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ – and Penny blushed slightly.
“Alright,” she said to a general murmur of approval around the group. “I’ll give you slightly insufferable, but I miss her.”
“Well hopefully you’ll be all be able to persuade her to come back next week then.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Tell her you want her to. Promise never to bother her on WhatsApp again and swear that you’ll never be late to the meetings… but don’t mention that you know about the scam. She asked me not to tell you. She’ll know that I have of course, but as long as we never mention it, I think we’ll all survive…”
Penny scanned the phone in her hand. “Is WhatsApp the blue one, or the green one?” she said…

Episode 1 of The Writer’s Circle ‘Penny’s Poem’ is here.
Episode 28 ‘Jeff Reads to the Room’ is here.

The Running Man on Listening to my Body

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard half of the England football squad, Joe Wickes, doctor Raj, Piers Morgan and Katie Price telling me that I must ‘listen to my body’ whilst I exercise. Well, I’ve tried it and, quite honestly, all it does is moan: ‘You’re going too fast,’ ‘You’re going too slow,’ ‘I’m feeling dizzy,’ ‘Ooh look, an ice cream van…’ It is also easily distracted. Worse yet is my brain. Brains, I have discovered, are not easy company for those taking exercise. Unlike the rest of the body, they become easily bored. Give your legs a simple job to do, e.g. running, and they will do it until they drop, but the minute the brain gets involved, everything goes to pot: ‘Are you ok leg? I sense that you are feeling a little bit hot/tired/wobbly. Would you like me to tell him to slow down? Would you like me to register that knee twinge? Should I make him aware that total collapse is just around the corner? If I have a word, I can almost certainly make the other knee come out in sympathy…’ The problem is, I can find no way of listening to my body other than through my brain and, fundamentally, listening to my brain is like listening to a speech from a Trades Union Congress Conference in the 1970’s – lots and lots of worthy words, but very little in the way of light relief, lots of beer and sandwiches but not enough smashed avocado on toast: big shoulders, even bigger chips.

And anyway, if I’m going to waste time in listening to what my body has to say, perhaps it ought to take a little time to listen to me. I tell it we need to be careful with what we eat and it says ‘Give me chocolate!’ I tell it we need to watch what we drink and it opens the whisky. I tell my body that we’re feeling good, and it seriously begs to differ. I tell it that I am about to die and it laughs in my face, tells me to get a grip, but I know that my brain is just filtering out the messages it is being sent by my limbs, lungs and assorted lights. Basically, all that my body wants to do is to tell me that I am wrong – and I have a life-full of people willing to do that for me. I play music whilst I run simply to stop it haranguing me. Frankly, if my body wants to talk to me it can either shout or wait until I get home and then it can speak to my wife. I don’t want to hear it…

The first entry in the Running Diary ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.

Zoo #45 – It

Continuing the rather more fanciful little spate of zoo poems aimed more directly at children.

This thing is like two balls of string
With half a horse between.
Its head is like a cream éclair;
Its feet like butter beans.

A tail of green, a mane of blue,
With spots along its back –
A cheerful disposition
Although its mood is black.

It could be `He’, it could be `She’,
It could be `Them’ or `They’
(I think it knows the answer
But is not inclined to say).

Its eyes are green, like tangerines,
It hasn’t any hair.
It’s really very common
Although extremely rare.

In fact, I’ve never seen one,
I promise you, it’s true,
And if you stay awake all night
You’ll never see one too!

Q. What is it?

A. I haven’t the faintest idea.

I’ve always written ‘children’s poems’ (even when I’m trying to do otherwise, my output seldom rises above the infantile). The absence of any call for logic is incredibly refreshing and saves hours of time in Wikipedia research. Spike Milligan had the greatest gift of writing for the child in all adults. It is something to which we should all aspire…

The Writer’s Circle #28 – Jeff Reads to the Room

“…You know the sensation, it’s a spark of light; barely perceptible, like a camera flash from behind you: sharp, sudden, no afterglow, just the sensation that for a split-second there has been a crack in the darkness and time has frozen just for you. Nothing more than a nano-second, but you’re aware that something – you can never quite put your finger on what thing – but something is not exactly as you left it. And you find yourself wondering what could have happened? Where you could have been? What you could have done? Still not entirely sure, really not at all certain, that anything has actually happened at all… Well, that’s what happened.

As usual, I took a circuit of the house, checked the doors and windows, peered out into the street, that kind of thing. I don’t need to turn on the lights; the vestigial glow of stand-by lamps is always enough to guide me. My attention was caught by everything and by nothing. The everyday contents of the house introduced itself to me piece-by-piece; imprinted itself onto my memory, slightly adrift of its normal position, but somehow unmoved. My home was speaking to me, article by article, trinket by trinket, memory by memory, telling me “Take a good look around you. Not one thing in here is yours. You own it all, but none of it is yours. You live here, but you don’t inhabit an inch of the fabric. When you go, there’ll be no sign that you ever lived here.”

This revelation, of course, was not instant. There was no thunder flash, no sudden awareness, no insight; my brain just doesn’t work like that. It can just about cope with a slow, oozing seepage of relevant information and that is what it does; it just about copes. Regardless of the pace at which facts are thrown at me, my head allows them to enter only at its own pace: when it has had enough, it shuts down. Anything mid-process is disregarded until it wakes me up in the middle of the night, with the kind of nagging urgency that is associated only with the need for food, sex or urination.

I remembered a story I had read once, one of those comic-book things I think, about a man for whom time stood still whilst the world carried on, unaffected, around him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually remember what had happened, why it had happened or how it had ended. I was fairly certain that there was some sort of moral attached to it, but I had no idea what that might be. I couldn’t focus. My brain had decided to do the shutting-down thing. It was telling me, in no uncertain terms, ‘Ok, I’ll hold everything together here, just long enough for you to get back to bed. But don’t take long mind or you’ll wake up with a very sore neck again, pins and needles in your legs, the pattern of the cat-flap embossed upon your forehead…’

Keeping a person awake for long enough to get to their bed is, you would think, a relatively mundane task for a brain. Linking forward motion to ocular input should be a piece of cake to the average lump of grey matter. Thirty billion neurons working as a team should surely be able to get a person to the bedroom without skinning the full length of their shin on a doorframe that hasn’t moved from the day that the house was built. The knowledge that your own brain hates you, is willing to do you harm, does not sit easily in the darkness hours. It can lead to worry. It can lead to neurosis. It can lead to just one small glass of whisky to help you sleep – if only any number of certain death traps did not lie between the fragile flesh and bone and the water of life. I took my shattered limb back to my bachelor bed.

I had moved from the marital bed and into the single bed in the spare bedroom as soon as it became clear to me that my wife was never coming home. I found it easier to sleep without space. There is something cocoon-like about a single bed. The early morning spaces that I stare into are not infinite in this tiny room. The walls and ceilings are always visible; even with my eyes closed I can see them. When I move, I can feel them. They are solid and dependable the walls of my little womb. Even when I dream, they do not move. They hold my little world and cradle it securely within its box-room universe.

The final stretch of my journey to sleep was illuminated by the mega-watt output of my bedside alarm, which was set, as always, ten minutes fast. The alarm itself set ten minutes early to allow for one cycle under the snooze button and a further ten minutes early just in case something went wrong with the snooze button and it decided to let me nap on for a full eighteen minutes. It was pointing as always towards the wall so that I couldn’t see the flashing green figures that illuminated its front, which meant that it was useless for time-keeping purposes, but absolutely ideal for strobe lighting the whole room metronomically from midnight to mid-day. I climbed between the sheets and looked over to the corner of the room with the small pile of books and cd’s which, outside of my clothes, and despite the three years that had elapsed since my wife’s departure, were the only things that were truly mine. They pulsed with the light, seeming to move forward and backwards like flotsam on the ebb and flow of radiance – looming out at me before scuttling back into the shadows like a… like a… well, like a really sinister pile of books and CD’s… I made a mental note to move them in the morning. I filed the mental note in the special compartment of my brain, along with all the other mental notes that were never acted upon; the reminders to cut my toe nails, trim my nasal hairs and pay the milkman. I wondered for a moment why I had not removed any of the things that I so despised: the furniture that I loathed; the pictures that made me cringe; the wallpaper that made my head spin. Was I hoping she would return? I don’t think so. The sexual pleasure that I had got from burning all of her underwear in the bath was far greater than any I remember whilst she was there.

Laziness, that was the truth. Inertia. The inability to do anything that required an actual decision outside of whether to microwave my curry from the tin or from the freezer; whether to drink my beer at the pub or in front of the TV; whether I could stretch another day out of these socks. I was surrounded by all these things I loathed simply because moving them would require me to take positive action of some kind – and the only thing I was positive about was that I was still not up to that.

I closed my eyes, decided what I wanted to dream about – a trick I perfected as a child – and allowed my body to become heavy, to sink into the mattress as my mind drifted away into… into… Why do my legs always do that? What makes them twitch like that? Another night and yet again the trick I learned as an adult – lying awake, counting the ripples in the artex ceiling and worrying about my aching, twitching legs…”

The Writer’s Circle began with ‘Penny’s Poem’ here.
Episode 27 ‘The Games Night’ is here.